


Spirit Proud

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: White Boots - Noel Streatfeild
Genre: Aunt and Niece, Community: ladiesbingo, Gen, Grief, Post-Canon, Skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 08:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10356546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Lalla tells her aunt that she's not going to be a skating champion.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Marmion', the same verse as the 'square-turned joints and strength of limb' bit.
> 
> For the ladiesbingo prompt 'The Writing on the Wall'.

A hesitant tap on the open door. Lalla was hovering on the threshold. Claudia glanced at the clock: surely it was past her bedtime. 'Come in?' she called, trying not to sound irritated.

Lalla advanced a few paces into the room. 'Aunt Claudia. I have something to tell you.'

Claudia laid her magazine down. 'Go on, dear?'

She stared at the carpet and muttered, 'I don't think... I mean, I'm _not_ going to be a skating champion.'

It was not even a surprise. Claudia had known that Lalla's recent results had been disastrous, that only some very intensive work from everybody involved had saved her on the second attempt; still, she did not know what to say. 'You're not going to be a skating champion?' she echoed stupidly.

'No,' Lalla said with a sudden flash of defiance. 'Firstly, because I don't want to be, and secondly, because I can't.'

'But of course you can!' It was vital to restore Lalla's confidence. What had shaken it? 'You have the talent; you only need to work, Lalla!'

'I know you want me to. I know it's about my father...' Lalla said. She was shifting from foot to foot. 'I know you want me to become a champion because of him.'

'He would have been so proud of you,' Claudia said mechanically, regretfully. An unexpected surge of fury assailed her. Cyril ought to have been here, ought to have been the one to whom Lalla was making this confession. Cyril ought to have been the one talking some sense into her. Cyril ought to have had the decency to remember he had a daughter before he went skating on thin ice. Cyril ought not have have been _so bloody stupid_.

'But you see,' Lalla said, 'I'm not him, and I couldn't ever be him, no matter how hard I tried. And so I don't think it's really worth trying.'

Actually, at that moment she sounded more like Cyril than ever before: that stubbornness, that certainty that she was right; they came directly from her champion father. Unable to put this into words, Claudia could only say, 'Really, Lalla!'

'And don't say anything about my square-turned joints and strength of limb. They're as square-turned and strong as they're ever going to be.' And indeed, Lalla looked particularly solid and immoveable.

A thought struck Claudia. 'Your friend, Harriet...'

Lalla flushed. 'Who knows? But if you ask Max, if you ask _anybody_ , she's going to do better than me.' She smiled without humour. 'She's got something that I haven't, without having spent her life on the ice since the age of three. Funny, isn't it?'

'I suppose you could put it like that,' Claudia allowed. She was aware of a part of herself that was shamefully glad that Lalla didn't seem to be any happier with this idea than she was herself.

'You see,' Lalla said gently, 'it wouldn't matter how hard I worked. I'm never going to have that last bit. And Harriet has it. Anyone, _everyone_ , who knows about skating can see that. She's good. She's got the... the thing. Nobody says that about me; at least, if they do, it's only because they think they see my father in me.'

Claudia was not at all sure that she understood. 'There's a lot of him in you.' There were few people alive now, she thought desolately, who had known Cyril, and of those she was in touch with fewer still. That was the War for you. 'You don't see it, Lalla, but I do.'

'But not the part that's a champion skater.'

Lalla had been threatening to stop skating every few weeks since she met the Johnson child, but that had always been with some ulterior motive. There had always been something that she wanted, and Claudia had yielded every time. Now, it seemed, she simply wanted to stop skating. And Claudia had no way to give her that, except to give in. 'So you're not going to skate any more,' she said neutrally, as if to test the way the words felt in her mouth.

Lalla gasped. 'Oh, Aunt Claudia, no! That's not what I said!'

'Isn't it?' Claudia asked, mystified.

'I said I'm not going to be a champion! But I'm not going to stop skating. We've – _I've_ got the most gorgeous plan.'

Claudia sighed. 'Tell me,' she said.

Lalla smiled with the serenity of one who knows that victory is assured. 'I'll work hard. I'll pass the things I need to pass. And then...'

'And then?' Claudia had an ominous, and quite unfamiliar, sense of being about to agree to whatever Lalla's gorgeous plan was.

Lalla beamed, a smile that Claudia had last seen over white satin and silver stars at the skating gala. 'Then I – then _we_ – can start to have fun.'

Perhaps, Claudia thought, things were not going to be quite so bad as all that.


End file.
